At his panel tonight at C2E2, Mark Waid revealed the details of his ambitious new Thrillbent digital comics portal. It’s a new entrant in the original digital comics race, but one with some heavy hitting talent behind it—in addition to Waid, John Rogers is a founder, and artist Peter Krause, who previously teamed with Waid for IRREDEEMABLE, will be collaborating on a new strip with him.

McCormick Place is sooooo big….one feels like a tiny ant crawling over a marble floor as you trudge from massive hall to massive hall. We turned on our GPS yesterday and logged more than 2 miles in no time. Today’s distance was probably more like 5 or 6 miles as we took it easy.

C2E2 is definitely in a crucial year. The first two years underperformed, but advance ticket sales are way up this year, so maybe this will be the time that the show draws the massive crowds that everyone thinks are possible. Saturday is going to be the big day.

Since the story broke in USA Today, DC has put out a press release with more information on their new original digital comics, which you can read below, but the short version is that the Ami-Comi comics, in addition to being written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, will be drawn by the following artists:

DC has finally pulled the trigger on their long-gestating original digital comics line, USA Today tells us. Several new projects are going to launch in addition to today’s launch for SMALLVILLE SEASON 11, by Bryan Q. Miller and the ongoing BATMAN BEYOND and BATMAN: ARKHAM UNHINGED webcomics. Here’s what’s new:

Anders Nilsen’s acclaimed BIG QUESTIONS has won the second Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize. The award recognizes the best graphic novel, fiction or non-fiction, by a living American and is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.

Image publisher Eric Stephenson delivered yesterday’s lunch presentation for Image Comics at the Diamond Retailer Summit. Instead of announcing any new projects, he used the time to deliver a speech about Image’s history and its present, and to urge retailers not to let readers craving something new slip away to digital by not giving Image’s ambitious new slate a chance.